 |
| From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/31/Jack_the_Ripper_FilmPoster.jpeg |
Dir. Jesús Franco
The Ripper (Klaus Kinski), a doctor, is prowling the streets of fog covered
London, a Euro-specific version where everyone is speaking German and the world
shown is built from German-Swiss construct, killing prostitutes because of an
internal psychosis. However the police are slowly closing in on him, with the
love of one detective (Josephine Chaplin)
willing to gamble with her life to drag out the killer. Even if it could be the
influence of the producers and crew on this film, a higher budget film from the
director, this is not the only film from Jess
Franco this atmospheric and very well made. With a career that has
travelled numerous countries co-producing the work, the late director was very
talented at his best, and Jack The
Ripper is reminiscent of the British co-productions in their lavish looks.
Unlike the British co-productions, this German co-production feels far more
lenient to allowing Franco to express
his more lurid, trangressive side along with mood. Far from the most lurid of Franco's work, far from the most violent
or sexually explicit film ever released on British DVD, and definitely not the
most violent or sexually explicit take on Jack the Ripper with the original
graphic novel of Alan Moore's From Hell (1999 collected) in existence.
But there is still things in this that, even with obvious prophetic effects,
still cause one to wince with what is shown or implied, while still not overdoing
for the sake of shock. Mixed with the mood the film has, expansive sets and
darkly lit streets, it works together very well.
 |
| From http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4037/4317835170_08ba0ec4d3.jpg |
Some may have issue with how most
of the film is slow paced and has quite a few dialogue scenes, but maybe it's
my personal taste here, but even with the plot reaching its obvious conclusion
with or without the scenes, the dramatic and police investigation sequences
were immensely engaging. Probably because, unlike an awful Franco film Bloody Moon
(1981), these sequences are actually of interest for characterisation, plot
or just detail. It was great that there's a side character, a blind man, whose
amplified sense of smell and sound would ultimately doom the killer, in the
beginning, to at least escaping the police by the skin of his teeth. That from
the beginning he's going to be found out quickly, Kinski's character more desperate than calculated. That he's shown
to actually be a person as well as a killer as a doctor. That there's comedy
with bickering amongst the police and witnesses, and the witnesses themselves. That
the cliché reason behind the killer's psychosis gets distorted through two very
distinct scenes, the first through visual manipulation, the second a two person
dialogue sequence played out through extreme close-ups of Kinski's face, showing that even if off-screen he was a
reprehensibly being, he was still compelling onscreen in genre films like this.
That, even if she becomes the per usual potential victim, Chaplin's character has a more calmed relationship with her
detective boyfriend and gets involved with tracking the killer down entirely on
her own initiative. The film, while possible to dismiss as perverse gloss, has
far more subtlety than most films in this genre. Altogether its one of the
better of Jess Franco's films. Not
one of his best, but at least rearing the silver tier. It proves the work of Franco has quality to it, its graphic
content mixed with a tense sense of tone.
 |
| From http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2436/4317100987_12a8d5bab3.jpg |
No comments:
Post a Comment